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Data autonomy. How do we get across to people that there's real value in owning your data - controlling it, hosting it, not just being someone else's product.

Data autonomy. How do we get across to people that there's real value in owning your data - controlling it, hosting it, not just being someone else's product. Why should we not take the broadest possible view? You own your likes, your comments, your amazon order history, your dental xrays, your histology reports, everything. One way to incentivize data consumers and processors would be to make them liable for mishandling, make the data so radioactive that they don't even want to hold onto it.

paulryanrogers 3y ago
Once data gets out it's impossible to completely take back. Regulations could help corral law-abiding actors, so I agree with the idea. Though I can also see how the incentives of social platforms encourage clamping down further and further on 3P access.
- r3trohack3r 3y ago
  > Once data gets out it's impossible to completely take back As a society, we understand that rights !== access. Just because you share your data with Facebook, giving them access to it, in the normal course of interacting with their servers does not grant them rights to that data. When Netflix delivers a video to your device, society understands you can’t make a copy of that video and share it with your neighbor. That’s called “The Pirate Bay.” Data on the internet is lacking equity: an ownership interest in property. As you generate data online, platforms accumulate equity in your data giving them control over that valuable property. If, instead, you accumulated equity in your data the entire data broker market would be “The Pirate Bay.”
- godelski 3y ago
  This. Honestly I'd love a government to take up the privacy mantel and protect its citizens. Sure, you lose the ability to spy on your citizens but so does every other country in the world. Seems like that's a net win. If USPS was made to ensure that all Americans can communicate, even making it explicit in the constitution. I don't know why this wouldn't also apply to cell phones and the internet. Are they not modern evolutions? Put the code on the gov's GitHub along with the rest. Other players can exist, but it sets a baseline standard. But any country can do this, doesn't need to be the US.
randunel 3y ago
So... GDPR? You can download your own data, force the data controller which acquired it to delete it and they're liable for mishandling it. Companies don't usually want to hold on to EU citizens' data because GDPR makes it quite radioactive, for them and whomever they sell it to.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
plagiarist 3y ago
Yeah, leaking financial data for millions of people should ruin the company and have fallout that hits the members of the board and C-suite. Instead it's actually just an opportunity to sell an identity theft "protection" subscription. I have no faith that people will get clued in and make it happen. Everyone is merrily lining up to use the third-party face scanner at the airports.
cyanydeez 3y ago
this isn't being done for privacy these orgs want to keep their LLM gold chests to themselves.
happytiger 3y ago
Pay them to hold on to their data and manage it? That’s about the only way for end-users to experience the actual value of data.
nradov 3y ago
Legally speaking you already own your healthcare data such as dental X-rays. In many cases you can even download your data from provider and payer organizations in industry standard formats (although dentistry specifically is way behind in this area). But for most patients this data is worth zero. Legal and privacy concerns aside, there's just not much use for it. Several start-ups have tried to de-identify and agregate such data for sale to researchers but consistency and quality issues make it tough to use in real studies.
idle_zealot 3y ago
I don't think the approach of getting consumers to care can work. Most people really just don't care about taking precautions when the negative impacts of not doing so are so diffuse and time-delayed; it's an unfortunate aspect of human nature. We usually overcome these individual failings by organizing into groups better suited for long-term planning. In this case the solution that comes to mind would be to make personal data legally onerous to hold and process for companies, to the extent that they would go out of their way to design their products and services to never touch the stuff, and if they do need it to operate then they would be incentivized to store it locally on users' devices and only synchronize it in a completely encrypted form such that they never have to deal with the legal implications of having access to it.
CuriouslyC 3y ago
AI is going to push data autonomy hard. Users are going to want to subscribe to different models for different things, and plug those models into whatever they're using. Everyone is going to support it, and to make it work there needs to be data exchange. Companies that don't support it to try and keep the data walled are going to hemorrhage customers.

paulryanrogers 3y ago

Once data gets out it's impossible to completely take back. Regulations could help corral law-abiding actors, so I agree with the idea. Though I can also see how the incentives of social platforms encourage clamping down further and further on 3P access.

r3trohack3r 3y ago
> Once data gets out it's impossible to completely take back As a society, we understand that rights !== access. Just because you share your data with Facebook, giving them access to it, in the normal course of interacting with their servers does not grant them rights to that data. When Netflix delivers a video to your device, society understands you can’t make a copy of that video and share it with your neighbor. That’s called “The Pirate Bay.” Data on the internet is lacking equity: an ownership interest in property. As you generate data online, platforms accumulate equity in your data giving them control over that valuable property. If, instead, you accumulated equity in your data the entire data broker market would be “The Pirate Bay.”
godelski 3y ago
This. Honestly I'd love a government to take up the privacy mantel and protect its citizens. Sure, you lose the ability to spy on your citizens but so does every other country in the world. Seems like that's a net win. If USPS was made to ensure that all Americans can communicate, even making it explicit in the constitution. I don't know why this wouldn't also apply to cell phones and the internet. Are they not modern evolutions? Put the code on the gov's GitHub along with the rest. Other players can exist, but it sets a baseline standard. But any country can do this, doesn't need to be the US.

randunel 3y ago

So... GDPR? You can download your own data, force the data controller which acquired it to delete it and they're liable for mishandling it. Companies don't usually want to hold on to EU citizens' data because GDPR makes it quite radioactive, for them and whomever they sell it to.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

plagiarist 3y ago

Yeah, leaking financial data for millions of people should ruin the company and have fallout that hits the members of the board and C-suite. Instead it's actually just an opportunity to sell an identity theft "protection" subscription. I have no faith that people will get clued in and make it happen. Everyone is merrily lining up to use the third-party face scanner at the airports.

cyanydeez 3y ago

this isn't being done for privacy these orgs want to keep their LLM gold chests to themselves.

happytiger 3y ago

Pay them to hold on to their data and manage it? That’s about the only way for end-users to experience the actual value of data.

nradov 3y ago

Legally speaking you already own your healthcare data such as dental X-rays. In many cases you can even download your data from provider and payer organizations in industry standard formats (although dentistry specifically is way behind in this area). But for most patients this data is worth zero. Legal and privacy concerns aside, there's just not much use for it. Several start-ups have tried to de-identify and agregate such data for sale to researchers but consistency and quality issues make it tough to use in real studies.

idle_zealot 3y ago

I don't think the approach of getting consumers to care can work. Most people really just don't care about taking precautions when the negative impacts of not doing so are so diffuse and time-delayed; it's an unfortunate aspect of human nature. We usually overcome these individual failings by organizing into groups better suited for long-term planning. In this case the solution that comes to mind would be to make personal data legally onerous to hold and process for companies, to the extent that they would go out of their way to design their products and services to never touch the stuff, and if they do need it to operate then they would be incentivized to store it locally on users' devices and only synchronize it in a completely encrypted form such that they never have to deal with the legal implications of having access to it.

CuriouslyC 3y ago

AI is going to push data autonomy hard. Users are going to want to subscribe to different models for different things, and plug those models into whatever they're using. Everyone is going to support it, and to make it work there needs to be data exchange. Companies that don't support it to try and keep the data walled are going to hemorrhage customers.